Your Doubt Monster Must Die

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

You: Creative, affable, well-intentioned. Bipedal. Humanoid.

Doubt Monster: Hostile, unclean, ill-mannered. Globular. Origin unknown.

Challenge: You sit down to create. The Doubt Monster extracts itself from the hole in the floor, drags itself across the carpet, and fondles your ankles. Progress stalls.

You: "Doubt Monster, go away."

Doubt Monster: Unintelligible.

And so it goes, you and the Doubt Monster. It climbs into your lap and tries to stick its fingers in your mouth. You push it away, and it flails on its back while mewling plaintively. You take a break, and it leaps up into your chair and bangs on your keyboard until it breaks both the B key and the L key. You push it out of the chair, trick it into going in the backyard by luring it with a piece of overripe sandwich meat, and knock it into the man-made lake. You watch as the bubbles surface, then stop. You go back inside, you lock the door, you return to your work. Is the Doubt Monster alive? Is the Doubt Monster dead? Who knows. For now, it is not where you live.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.